CORALVILLE, Iowa (AP) – The University of Iowa and state prison officials are testing a certificate program that includes sessions at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center in Coralville. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that the series is the first official academic cooperation between the Iowa City-based university and the prison facility. It builds on the institutional relationship developed by music professor Mary Cohen, who leads a choir composed of community members and inmates.

The center’s programs coordinator, Kat Litchfield, says the long-term goal remains to develop a program through which inmates could earn college credit for courses taken in the prison. She says she’d like the university eventually offer something similar to the Liberal Arts in Prison Program already in place at Grinnell College.